Medical device technology and the systems providing healthcare service to public populations have progressed exponentially during recent years following computing revolution in the early 1970's and personal computing revolutions since the 1980's.
This is well-known history and the public health benefits deriving from these technical and informational advancements are very important and significant for citizens of many countries. However, along with this progress, there are unanticipated challenges created by the complexity and interconnectedness of medical and healthcare industry systems.
One recent risk has been the proliferation of ‘hacker’ activity with purpose of causing damage and disruption to others based upon personal, political, nation-state and economic objectives. For medical industry, this means patients have valid concerns about the privacy, accuracy and disclosure of their very sensitive health-related and person-related ‘information.’
Current industry trends address these problems with ubiquitous security solutions focused on applications, databases, firewalls, and activity alarm systems. One part of the solution is, for example, proprietary encrypting hard drives which are manufactured and installed in servers and workstations to protect against unauthorized disclosure. In 2017, there was a recent data breach at a major financial data collector resulting in over 140 million detailed financial records—data that will be used in theft and impersonation for fraudulent gain. So in short, this is a public problem that requires multiple solutions to protect privacy of individuals and patients. Privacy expectations are extremely sensitive in medical healthcare.